


Words

by SLWalker



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Time Travel AU, Two Mauls for the Price of One
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-05 22:10:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12803454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLWalker/pseuds/SLWalker
Summary: Maul has never found much use for talking; various attempts at it have either lead to suffering or-- more suffering, really, and after Orsis, he has had no real urge to engage in conversation with anyone.  To see some version ofhimspit words out so freely unsettles him; the urge to snap at this other-him to shut up is sometimes nearly unbearable.





	Words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Unlikely Allies in Adversity](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12800901) by [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly). 



His other-self -- his _older-self_  -- talks a great deal.

There doesn't always even seem to be a purpose to it. He snipes and comments often at the Jedi with a surprising lack of heat, though a more understandable amount of wariness. He grumbles at Savage sometimes, though rarely in any genuine contradiction; more often, he talks to Savage as if they have known one another longer than mere days. He seems mostly awkward towards Feral; not cruel, nor indifferent, but very uncertain.

And he nearly never says anything to Maul that is not curt order or clipped question.

But the sight of himself yammering on is disconcerting, to say the least. Maul has never found much use for talking; various attempts at it have either lead to suffering or-- more suffering, really, and after Orsis, he has had no real urge to engage in conversation with anyone. To see some version of _him_ spit words out so freely unsettles him; the urge to snap at this other-him to shut up is sometimes nearly unbearable.

He holds his tongue, though.

They mean to take on Master Sidious. Such a thought would have been entirely unfathomable, until the woman on Naboo mentioned the muun.   _Hego Demask._ Magister of the IBC. Long-time confidant of now-Chancellor Sheev Palpatine.

Maul knows of his Master's associates, but that one had come as a surprise. The thought which followed had chilled him to his bones: That his Master perhaps answered to another. He barely had time to _begin_  to grasp the ramifications of that, before this other-him and this old Jedi had intercepted him coming back to Theed from an attempted routing of the gungans.

He winces at the memory; he had been so caught off-guard that he hadn't put up much of a fight. He barely had his staff drawn when his other-self just shot him with a stunbolt. And when that didn't immediately knock him out, a second and third. He woke up pinned to a wall by his throat, disarmed and disoriented, to a pair of glowing yellow eyes and the one single threat that kept him from doing anything about either of those two prior facts.

"If you give us any trouble -- any _whatsoever_ \-- I will drop you on our Master's doorstep a traitorous failure and let him decide your fate."

It was a very effective threat. Even if Maul protested his innocence to Master Sidious -- and doing so in the past never led to anything good no matter how truthful it was -- his Master would turn his mind inside out to confirm it. Maul's word would not be good enough. His failure to adequately neutralize this threat, regardless of how caught off-guard he was, would not be acceptable either.

The thought occurred there that perhaps if he found out what this madness was and took back  _that_ information, it might buy him leniency.

His other-self snorted even as he thought it. "You'll be told what you need to know, only when you need to know it."

And that was it. He was dropped like a sack of rocks, unceremoniously, the vicious headache he had from being stunned spiking again as he landed. He glared balefully after his other-self, and then at the Jedi, who was looking at him with troubled eyes before turning to follow, back up to what seemed to be a cockpit of a ship currently in hyperspace.

Both of them so unconcerned that they showed their backs without so much as a glance over the shoulder.

Somehow, that was actually the worst part.

Now, there is Savage. And Feral. Brothers, or so they are said to be; he avoids them as much as he can, unsettled by their existence, unsettled by the possibility that they _are_. There is some nebulous plan he has no solid knowledge of nor input in, to take on Master Sidious, which is certain to lead to all of them dead. If they are lucky. If Master doesn't play with them first. A Jedi who he catches just staring at him sometimes, and the disturbed look in his eyes, nearly unbearable because it's not the look of someone threatened, but the look of someone who very much _isn't_.

And this other-him, half-machine and too many words.

They will end up dead only if they are lucky.

Now, he sits with his back against the bulkhead outside of the cockpit; attempts at meditation have failed him, restlessness itches in his bones and somewhere in the marrow of them, panic is building.

Even Maul doesn't know why.

The Jedi goes to walk past and then stops; the lines around his eyes crease deeper, and Maul fights the urge to stand up because he doesn't want to give the Jedi the satisfaction of being treated like he's a threat.

"How old are you?" he asks, one of the few times he has addressed Maul directly.

Maul raises his lip in answer; shows his canines. Only after he does, does he realize that he is walking right into a trap he couldn't have seen laid, let alone sprung.

"He doesn't know," the other-him answers, dryly, from where he is still in the cockpit. "Somewhere around twenty-two. Perhaps twenty-three. A young fool."

The Jedi's eyebrow goes up even as Maul bristles, caught between wanting to rocket to his feet and the continued desire to defy both the urge and the message he is sure it would send. But instead of addressing him, the Jedi looks back to the cockpit. "You've already seen what path wretched and miserable treatment sent you down once, Maul. Perhaps you ought to take the lesson to heart, as to how well that worked out last time, and try something else this time around."

At that, neither of them have words.


End file.
